Chilcot School Including Number 4 At Rear

Chilcot School, including No. 4 at rear, Tiverton

This is a council meeting room and house, formerly a school and headmaster's house, dated 1611 with minor additions at the rear. It stands on St Peter Street and represents an outstanding example of an early 17th-century school building.

The main structure is built of squared purplish stone rubble with most architectural details in dressed limestone, possibly from Beer. The front doorway appears to be of local volcanic stone, refaced with cement. A separate storehouse is rendered. The roofs are slated with stone parapets on the gable ends; the storehouse roof is covered in corrugated asbestos. A 20th-century metal ventilator sits on the centre of the ridge. The house has a stone chimney, probably 19th-century, at the front end and a red brick chimney at the rear.

The plan consists of an open hall along the street frontage with a through-passage at the left-hand end and a gallery above the passage. The headmaster's house lies behind, positioned to the right-hand end. Opposite it, to the left of the courtyard, is a two-storey building, probably a 19th-century addition, with a storehouse adjoining.

The school is single-storey with a front elevation featuring four mullioned and transomed windows of four lights each with king mullions and ogee-moulded mullions. The windows have continued hoodmoulds. At the left-hand end is a round-arched doorway with moulded jambs, imposts and archivolt; the keystone projects and appears originally to have had a pendant. The hoodmould has lozenge terminals. A studded plank door, much repaired, has a round-arched wicket-gate cut into it. Above the door is a square moulded plaque inscribed: "Robert Comin als Chilcot borne in this towne founded this free English Schoole and indowd it with maintenance for ever anno dni. 1611." Above the plaque is a two-light mullioned gallery window with continued hoodmould. The building has a projecting plinth with chamfered coping of volcanic stone and a moulded corbel table under the eaves.

The rear wall contains two windows to the left, matching those at the front. The rear doorway to the passage has a Tudor arch with straight hoodmould; the masonry is encased in cement. A rear extension on the ground storey forms a lobby to the rear courtyard, featuring a plain segmental stone arch and a studded plank door.

The headmaster's house is two-storey with a three-window front facing the courtyard. The centre doorway is concealed by a 19th- or 20th-century gabled porch. The windows have ogee-moulded stone mullions; those in the ground storey are of four lights with hoodmoulds and relieving arches, while those above are of three lights at either end and two lights in the middle. The rear gable wall, prominent in views from Exe Bridge, has two stone-mullioned windows in each storey. Those in the ground storey have three lights to the left and two to the right; those in the second storey have two lights, with the left light featuring iron casements with small oblong leaded panes.

The interior features a through-passage divided from the schoolroom by a stone-rubble wall containing a Tudor-arched limestone doorway with ovolo and ogee mouldings, carved spandrels and large pyramid-like stops. Studded plank double doors with moulded ribs complete the opening. The schoolroom itself is plain. In the rear wall to the right is a segmental-headed fireplace with double-ogee moulding and a barrel-vaulted ceiling with moulded ribs having carved bosses at the intersections. The gallery woodwork is probably entirely of 1907; a plaque records that in that year the school was incorporated into a gymnasium. The interior of the house was not inspected during the survey.

Robert Chilcot was the brother-in-law of George Slee, another Tiverton wool merchant, and the nephew of Peter Blundell, a wool merchant with Tiverton links. Tiverton also boasts Blundell's School, another notable educational foundation of the period.